ExternalProject: Download via 'git archive --remote='
The git archive
command supports a --remote=<repo>
option to generate an archive locally from a remote Git repository URL. It downloads only the needed tree/blob objects and does not need to download history.
ExternalProject_Add
could offer an option for use in combination with GIT_REPOSITORY
and GIT_TAG
to efficiently download only the specified version instead of cloning a whole repo.